>>
>> How does <http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/draft-duerst-iri>
>> work?
>
> There are three actual files on the server,
> http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/draft-duerst-iri.xml
> http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/draft-duerst-iri.txt
> http://www.w3.org/International/iri-edit/draft-duerst-iri.html
> and they get content negotiated, but of course can also be
> accessed directly. I'm not sure exactly what this is in your
> terminology.
>
Then I imagine the authoring model must be that the client can PUT an
application/xml file to draft-duest-iri.xml, PUT a text/plain file to
draft-duerst-iri.txt, and so on. The resource draft-duerst-iri may not
truly exist and it might be either forbidden or cause confusion if the
client tries to PUT to that URL. By that model, the PATCH method
could work exactly the same with its existing syntax. Only the
GET/HEAD methods actually do content negotiation. Probably PROPFIND
and PROPPATCH and other WebDAV methods are undefined, or if they are
defined they'd work independently on each resource, so that for example
PROPFIND 'getcontentlength' to the text file would retrieve the text
file's length.
It would certainly be interesting if some day this were
formalized/standardized.
Lisa